Origins Of It
dramatic movement encompassing plays written by, for, and about African Americans.
Black Theatre
- famous khoikhoi woman who was exhibited as a freak show attraction in the 19th century in Europe
Sarah Baartman (Hottentot Venus)
the makeup used by a nonblack performer playing a black role.
blackface
a blossoming (c. 1918–37) of African American culture, particularly in the creative arts, and the most influential movement in African American literary history.
Harlem Renaissance
Black Arts Repertory founder and famous black playwright of the 60s and 70s.
Amiri Baraka
rhythmic and acapella songs sung by people working
work song
famous black playwright and writer of “A Raisin in the Sun”.
Lorraine Hansberry
(also known as minstrelsy) – it was a popular, now offensive, form of stage entertainment featuring songs, dances, and comic dialogue in highly conventionalized patterns, usually performed by white actors in blackface.
Minstrel Shows
she was a famous civil rights activist, entertainer, performed on stage, screen, and recordings.
Josephine Baker
revolutionary black theatre, which sought to create a strong "black aesthetic" in American Theatre.
Black Arts Repertory
a form of percussive dance in which the participant's entire body is used as an instrument to produce complex rhythms and sounds
stepping
famous black playwright and creator of the Century Cycle plays, including “Fences”
August Wilson
large, dark, obedient, singing, docile woman who was protective of the white family and portrayed as dominant member of her own family
Mammy
American dancer, choreographer, and anthropologist noted for her innovative interpretations of ritualistic and ethnic dances.
Katherine Dunham
this theatre wanted to promote blacks to be liberators, artistic and expressive as opposed to typical acting model that is seen in the mainstream Eurocentric theatre
Urban Arts Core
a religious song of a kind associated with black Christians of the southern US, and thought to derive from the combination of European hymns and African musical elements by black slaves.
Spirituals
▪developer of the choreopoem and playwright of “For Colored Girls (Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf)”.
Ntozake Shange
characterizations of black children as dirty, unkempt, savage beings
Pickaninny
this theatre put on plays in a downtown Manhattan theatre 40 years before Lincoln ended slavery
The African Company
founders of the American Negro Theatre
Abram Hill and Frederick O'Neal
between a speaker and listener in which all statements are punctuated by expressions or responses.
Call and Response
traveling entertainer/storyteller who tells and maintains an oral history in Africa
Griot
characters in minstrel shows that played percussion and often misinterpreted things (to portray blacks as being uneducated.)
Mr. Bones and Mr. Tambo
written Garland Anderson, the first play by a black playwright on Broadway.
Appearances
founded in 1940, was a spin-off to the Negro Unit of the Federal Theatre Project of the Roosevelt administration
American Negro Theatre (ANT)